by Caro Ramsay
Lorna looked at her boss, not making any sense of it.
Costello started to sift through the clothes that Dali had already searched, nothing was elastic-waisted or loose fitting. She was a young fashionista, a size eight. The slim-fitting skirt was a size eight. She would have known the minute that she started to put on weight. Orla Sheridan had known that she was pregnant, Costello was sure of it, but had kept under the radar despite the financial benefits social services would have offered her. Was there financial benefit to be harvested in some other way?
‘Where did she have the baby?’
‘The Queen Elizabeth.’ Lorna’s eyes creased up at the corner. ‘I think.’
Costello phoned in to check, not really surprised that there was no record of Orla Michaela Sheridan having given birth at that hospital, but their record-keeping could be notorious. She would run a full check later.
‘OK, so has anybody, anywhere, actually seen Wee Polly?’
‘I have …’ Lorna began, then corrected herself. ‘I have seen photographs of her.’
‘Or of a baby?’
‘Yes, a baby. But Wee Polly? I wouldn’t know. I really wouldn’t know.’
Valerie Abernethy walked into the huge, high-ceilinged hall of her flat. Her flat, not their flat any more. Her flat, it had been that way since Grieg had walked out, plucking his car keys from the small ebony bowl that still sat on the hall table next to the picture of Abby and the kids, taking his Audi and driving out of her life. She tossed the keys of her Porsche in the self-same bowl, just to show she didn’t care. The mirror above, all six-feet high and four-feet wide, ornate in its guilt frame, looked back at her with somebody else’s eyes. Black. Barren. Guilty. She dropped her small suitcase, her handbag and her laptop under the table, and kicked off her shoes, dropping three inches in height suddenly, going back to what she had become; small and dumpy.
She clapped her hands, the slap echoing round the empty space. That normally brought Alfred running. He was a strange little cat with funny bulging eyes that were too big for his face, his round tummy too short for his legs. Black and white, he looked like a penguin or a film director. It was his resemblance to Hitchcock that got him his name.
Alfred didn’t appear. There was no loud mewling from the kitchen demanding food, which was his ‘Mohammed must come to the mountain’ act. There was no banging of the cat flap, which was his ‘where have you been all day’ act. There was no sprint down the hall with heavy paws that suggested the weight of a full-grown Bengal tiger. There was nothing at all.
Just silence.
She skliffed her way on her stockinged feet, through to the kitchen that seemed empty without the pad pad of the cat behind her and put the kettle on before opening the fridge and taking out a bottle of vodka. She poured herself a long measure and downed it in one, letting that little frisson float over her. Then poured herself another. She sipped this one more slowly, walking towards the window that looked over the back garden and leaned on it, staring down. One of the neighbours must have been out sweeping up loose leaves. It looked very tidy. From up here on the Royal Terrace, she could see right over the city, Auld Reekie. Edinburgh. A city built of water colours; muted and rather quiet, distinguished and a bit … well, sad. A city with her best days behind her, a city with her guts ripped out. Anybody enjoying themselves in Edinburgh city centre was either faking it or a tourist, or a tourist faking it. She didn’t think that the city had any soul, no real soul, it was very beautiful but without spirit. Like a few women she had known.
Or maybe it was the subtle but prevailing east wind, so cold it caught her breath and ran away with it. Even a warm day in Edinburgh had a chill about it, the way a warm day in Glasgow could still have rain pouring from the heavens.
She looked out at the gathering clouds and then down at the back garden again to where the bins were, neatly lined up and numbered. Two owners had their names on the lids. A black bag sat on the lid of her bin, folded and curled round its contents. That would incur another complaining letter to the factor about the bins being kept untidy and encouraging rats. Valerie put the glass down on the marble worktop of the central island and picked up the keys to the communal back door. She didn’t bother putting any shoes on, hurrying in her stocking feet, out her own door and into the hall, then to the back of the terrace where she was smacked by a blast of cold Edinburgh air. Through the small gate, the roughness of the small brick path bit into the skin of her feet, snagging her tights.
The package was small, cold, heavy. It gave slightly as she lifted it with both hands. She unwound a little of the bag, exposing the small face, the little pair of white feathery spectacles, his open eyes stared into nothing, pink button nose with moustache of crimson blood. She rewrapped the plastic shroud. Her heart chilled. She couldn’t look but she couldn’t pull her eyes away. His intestines had come out his tummy, a string of pink sausage on the bin lid.
She stood in her black LK Bennett suit, realizing she was saying goodbye to her best friend.
And they had driven away, leaving him on the road.
To be scooped up and put on the bin.
Alfred.
The door behind her opened. It was the nosy cow from the other ground-floor flat, a right Miss Jean Brodie, tight-arsed in a cream Arran knit and tweed trousers.
‘Oh, you’ll get the death of cold about you, dear. Oh, look at the mess of it, the poor wee thing.’ She stretched out her wrinkly old hands, trying to fold the cat back into the bin bag, squeezing him all wrong, crunching him up like an unwanted jumper.
‘No,’ snapped Valerie, elbowing the woman away. Valerie seized her sad little bundle, slamming the back communal door behind her, locking the old bitch out. Valerie wanted to scream at the top of her voice. Nothing went right for her, absolutely fucking nothing and now her little cat had been killed. What harm had he done to anybody?
She placed the little bundle on the central island, a small pathetic parcel in such a big and bright room, downing her vodka in one, then pulled a stool over and sat at the island, refilling the glass, not bothering to close the bottle. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring Jean Brodie hammering on the outside door. Valerie sat and looked at the bundle of fur and blood and bone for a long time, stroking his fur and flattening it all back down, pulling out bits of gravel and dirt that didn’t belong there.
Unsteady on her feet, she went to fetch the red blanket from the bedroom.
She wanted to text somebody and ask them to come over. Grieg would be away with his new wife. Abigail would be at home with her man and her son. Archie would be ‘busy’ in Glasgow, visiting the wife who was incarcerated for losing her mind. Valerie found that a bit funny, then bit her lip until she stopped crying. By then her lips were bleeding.
She picked the blanket from the bedspread, now as smooth as a millpond. He was a good wee cat Alfred, never scratching the furniture but leaving circular patterns of dark hair on the bedclothes, spirals like ebony snowflakes. There was very little sign that he had ever been here. She carried the blanket back through to the kitchen, negotiating her way through the open kitchen door and round the end of the breakfast bar, holding on to steady herself on the sharp corners.
After another slug from the bottle, she climbed back on the stool and opened the sad little parcel. Slowly and carefully she started to push the soft intestines back into her wee cat.
Costello had left the flat, walked down the close and out into the back court and now she was squatting, looking at the badly laid concrete slabs and noticing the linear patterns of little clumps of earth, about eighteen inches apart, that stopped a couple of feet away from the edge of the flower bed under the window. Then her phone pinged. One text was from Archie asking her if she was OK, so she deleted that immediately. The other was far more interesting. McCaffrey had done a thorough job and came up with two numbers, both pay-as-you-go, that James Chisholm had called regularly. One had twenty-to thirty-minute calls over the last few months, the oth
er had only two-or three-minute calls. Both had stopped the day before Sholto was taken. McCaffrey was good but he had had no training with CID, never mind a murder team. He was intelligent, had sense and didn’t mind staying on to get the job done. She texted back thanks and told him she’d order a triangulation on the numbers. That cost a lot of money but she was saving them a fortune in man hours. Whatever it was, James Chisholm was up to his eyeballs in it.
She had just finished texting when her phone rang.
It was Mulholland on his mobile. ‘Hi, taxi company called me back within five.’
‘What magic do you possess to get that info so quickly?’
‘Taxi companies always do. I threaten them with you.’
‘And?’
‘We’ve already got the driver. Billy McDonald, he had just come into the office for his lunch. I mentioned a vulnerable child, five weeks old, missing, and the address of Orla’s flat. They think it was a pick up on Primrose Street.’ He waggled the handset around. ‘I have been looking at the map, it looks right. Big black hair? Red jumper? Teens?’
Costello raised an eyebrow, moving out from the building to see if the reception got a little better. ‘Sounds right. Where did he take her?’
‘To Glasgow Central.’
‘Shit.’
‘But she didn’t get on a train.’
‘Really?’
‘I could really do with something more interesting than hanging around on this phone like a bell end.’
‘Where did she go, Vik?’ She heard him sigh, it was pathetic. ‘Look, Vik, you know you are not fit to be operational, but I will do what I can. I think this is going to pan out to something bigger and if so, I will put a word in for you, but in all honesty, the way my luck is going, as soon as I flag it up, the case will be taken off me. I hear what you are saying but as yet I have no connection between these two cases I am working. But, I think somebody with a better mind than me has already joined the dots.’ At that moment she looked into the back window of the flat, Lorna had moved to the window and was watching Costello carefully and behind her was Dali, watching Lorna.
Costello moved the phone closer to her ear, as if they could hear her through the glass of the old sash window.
‘There was no baby in the cab.’
‘I think I knew that.’
‘She gets off at the taxi rank but she asked, specifically for the one on Hope Street, not at the main door, so I figure she’s not getting on the train?’
‘What about a low-level train?’
‘No, he watched her as she dragged her case across Hope Street, heading west,’ said Mulholland. ‘And Wyngate says hello.’
‘Say hello back,’ said Costello, ‘I hope you are both very happy together.’
‘The driver confirmed there was a small suitcase, leopard skin pattern but it was not heavy, she moved it about with no effort if it stayed on the flat. We’ve asked for the CCTV, it’ll be here anytime now. They will buzz it straight through to me, and Wyngate and I have offered to view it for you and help you in any way we can.’
‘You are so generous. What did your boss say to that?’
‘Mahon? I think his attitude is more secular, and we should all stick to our own jobs. He didn’t say it in quite so many words though.’
‘Well, if you really want to annoy him, find out who owns these numbers.’ She reeled off the two mobile phone numbers that James Chisholm had called regularly. ‘I know they are pay-as-you-go but do what you can.’
‘In exchange for …?’
‘I will do what I can.’ And she continued her slow progress round the garden, glad of the protection from the wind afforded by the high walls of the tenement. She felt like she was walking in a fortress.
SIX
‘What did she say? Any chance for us to get out this office and stretch our legs?’ Wyngate, unaware of his self-hypnotic suggestion, stretched his legs under his desk.
‘I think she said that we were excellent little police officers and should both be promoted.’ Mulholland jotted down the numbers. ‘You get them traced.’ He looked at the CCTV that was being uploaded onto his screen. ‘These images are good, aren’t they?’
‘That’s the one benefit of working here, stuff works, all kinds of gadgets for looking through CCTV.’
Mulholland was looking closely at the screen, ‘So this is Orla going west, in the direction of some offices, big hotels …’
‘And some very lower-end hotels. Rent-by-the-hour hotels. Was she a sex worker?’
‘Costello didn’t say. We should really be leaving the experts to look at this, they will do it much quicker than we can.’ But neither of them moved, both staring intently at the screen.
‘Where is she heading?’ Mulholland leaned forward, eyes searching the quartered screen as the images on each flickered and morphed, people walking jerkily from one frame into another.
‘Let’s see if we can pick her up on Hope Street, she’s easy to spot. A pelmet of a skirt, long cardigan thing and big black hair. Look for a skinny bird who looks as if she is wearing a Davy Crocket hat.’
Mulholland turned to look at the map behind him. ‘Better to track her and see where she goes. There is no point in taking shortcuts. Too many big hotels for her to nip into. Once we know, we can send Costello round to follow it up. Are you sure Costello didn’t say she was on the game?’
‘She didn’t say that.’
‘OK, should we put an official request in? What was the name of the social worker she did a runner from?’
Wyngate leaned over and checked his notes. ‘McGill, Lorna McGill. That name rings a bell.’
Mulholland stretched back in his chair and cracked his neck. ‘She was on the Kissel case, wasn’t she? She looks about 12. She let that woman kill her kid and then lets this one out a window, and this one has a five-week-old baby that nobody can quite locate. Do we see a connection there? Apart from Lorna McGill being bloody useless at her job.’
Wyngate pulled a face, making his gormless face look more gormless than ever, if that was possible. ‘I had never thought of that.’
It was perfectly possible that he had not.
‘I am sure that has not passed by Costello’s radar. And she was on the baby swap case last night.’ Mulholland pointed his pen at Wyngate. ‘Did you see that in the papers? Three small kids that have come to harm, or might have come to harm, all of them right circling around Costello.’
‘Yeah, but surely the Waterside baby abduction is a mental health issue, not criminal. Kissel wasn’t abduction, that was just evil.’ Wyngate tapped on the screen. ‘When was the last time Lorna McGill saw this kid? When we had our two the health visitor was never away from the place.’
‘I don’t think Costello said.’
They continued to watch the screen. ‘I wonder what the matter with these people is?’ mused Wyngate.
‘Some women are not cut out to be mothers.’
‘I meant the social workers, why can they not do their jobs properly?’
‘Over-stretched and under-resourced, that is their issue. You could argue that if the police had enough resources there would be no crime. And I think … look at that, is that her?’ Mulholland pointed at the screen with his pen. ‘Right there.’
Sure enough, there was a teenager, looking like any other teenager, maybe hurrying a little more, the odd look behind her as if she suspected she was being pursued.
‘Yip, cardigan longer than her skirt and a black beehive, that’s her. Where does she go?’
Mulholland clicked and rotated the screen, his eyes darting from one frame to another. He was rather enjoying himself. ‘She crosses Hope Street, goes along Argyle Street, walking away from the city centre, there she is going past the Radisson and then …’
‘What?’
‘She turns down Brown Street, I think, at Kentigern House, going down towards the river. Come on, come on.’ His hand tapped impatiently as the digital imaging reloaded. ‘And she turned off, cutting thr
ough to Inkerman Street, right where the Edwardian Building is.’ Again he typed, calling up more images. ‘Down that lane, Sevastopol Lane, I think that is, and we lose her. She doesn’t come out the other side into Inkerman Street, the system doesn’t cover the shortcut.’
Wyngate took a note of the address, planning to phone Control to get somebody to look around on foot, see what the local buildings had covered by their own security systems. Then he caught sight of another figure crossing the road. ‘Good God, have a look at that?’
Mulholland looked. ‘Jesus, how pregnant is she, about ten months?’
‘Ten months pregnant with twins, a pair of pachyderms from the size of her.’
Mulholland went off to get a coffee leaving Wyngate to watch the slow lumbering progress of an unknown pregnant woman in a blue coat, until she too disappeared up Sevastopol Lane. She moved out of range of one camera to be picked up on the next, but this camera was high and the lens was covered in street grime. The speed was slow, making her movements jerky as she made her stop-start progress down the narrow walkway, one woman who was just about to have a baby. Following in the footsteps of a woman who had just had a child.
‘She just disappears.’
‘Who?’ Mulholland banged the coffee down, thinking that he had missed something.
‘Miss Bluecoat. She vanishes.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Seriously, she vanishes into thin air. You had better give Costello a phone.’
‘Oh no. You are not making me look stupid, people don’t disappear. Get another angle or something. They must have gone somewhere.’ Mulholland put his feet up on the desk and went back to sleep, while still on hold.
The minute she was back in the car, Dali had asked Costello to take her back to her city centre office. Costello wasn’t too keen. She was more intent on making phone calls, and very intent that Dali should not hear. It hadn’t passed her by that Lorna was not the only common denominator, Dali was more so. And Dali had power. And she had the knowledge of vulnerable women, their pregnancies and their children at her fingertips. As soon as Costello had been put on the Sholto case, here was Dali, sticking to her like glue and trying to overhear her every word.